Why “That’s Just the Policy” Has Never Been Enough

I’ve spent much of my life figuring out systems I never expected to understand. The persistence helps. The part where I don’t know when to stop is a little more complicated.

There are few phrases in the English language more effective at making me ask another question than “That’s just the policy.”

I understand why people say it. Sometimes there really is a rule. Sometimes the person answering the phone has no authority to change it. Sometimes the answer is simply no.

But I have a difficult time accepting that the existence of a rule automatically means we're finished discussing it.

Which rule? Where is it written? Who decided it applied to this situation? What happens when the circumstances don't fit the assumptions behind it?

At that point, somewhere in America, another browser tab is opening.

I started asking questions before I knew what I was doing

I didn't grow up with a particularly reliable roadmap for how to navigate adult life. Getting into college, figuring out how to pay for things, dealing with schools, government offices and paperwork—much of it involved learning the process while I was already standing in the middle of the problem.

In my early twenties, I remember getting involved when a young relative was struggling at school. From my perspective, the system was moving toward an outcome that made it easier to stop dealing with him than to figure out how to help him continue.

I wasn't an education expert. I wasn't a lawyer. I was an uncle who thought the adults in the room ought to have a better answer.

So I went to a school meeting and pushed back. I asked questions and argued that he should have the opportunity to stay enrolled. I remember succeeding in that immediate fight, even though what happened afterward was more complicated.

That experience left me with a rather inconvenient belief: not knowing the process is not a particularly good reason to stop trying to understand it.

I'm not suggesting everyone should walk into an administrative meeting convinced they're the smartest person there. I certainly wasn't. But there is a difference between respecting someone's expertise and assuming the first decision you hear must be the only one available.

Sometimes the problem isn't the rule. It's the paperwork.

Years later, when my mother became seriously ill, I found myself navigating another collection of institutions: healthcare providers, insurance companies, support services, people coming into her home, people making decisions, and people telling me what they could or couldn't discuss.

I wanted to help coordinate her care. The obstacle was that wanting to help and having the legal authority to participate are not the same thing.

So I learned about powers of attorney. I worked to get the documents I needed and made sure the relevant people had copies. Hospitals, doctors, service providers—I kept documents available because I didn't want every new conversation to begin with whether I was allowed to be part of it.

The paperwork didn't make the situation easy. It changed the conversation. I could spend less time trying to establish why I was there and more time asking what support was actually available to her.

I didn't know then that it would be the final year of her life.

I also didn't know nearly enough about the systems I was trying to coordinate. I learned because I needed to. There wasn't much time to wait around for someone to hand me a user manual.

The thing I've come to recognize is that a system can have perfectly legitimate requirements and still be terribly difficult for an ordinary person to navigate. Those two facts aren't mutually exclusive.

There's a downside to being relentless

Here's where I'd love to tell you that all this persistence made me a model of patience and diplomacy.

It did not.

I've thought about the way I approach problems, and I can see that I sometimes arrive ready for an argument before anybody has actually started one.

If I've researched something and think I understand the rule, I can become unusually attached to proving that I'm right. I ask for the source. I ask someone else. I look for another department. And if that doesn't work, I start researching who has the authority to review the decision.

Sometimes that's exactly what a situation requires.

Other times I suspect a more patient conversation would have accomplished the same thing without making everyone involved want to hide beneath their desk.

I've spent years being the person who figures things out. It can become easy to confuse solving the problem with winning the argument. They are not always the same thing.

And the person on the other side of the counter isn't necessarily the institution. They may be an employee with a script, limited authority, and a queue of people who are every bit as stressed as I am.

I'm still learning to remember that while I'm in the middle of trying to get something accomplished.

What I actually want when I ask for the policy

When an answer doesn't make sense to me, I want to understand the reasoning. Not because every rule is wrong, but because a correct rule applied to the wrong circumstances can still produce a bad result.

I want to know what the rule says, who is authorized to interpret it, whether there's a process for unusual circumstances, and what documentation would make the situation clearer.

I also want to know when the answer really is final. That's the part I have a harder time accepting.

If there's something useful in my approach, I think it's this: don't confuse an initial answer with a complete explanation. Ask what the process actually requires. Be prepared to document what you're saying. And remember that knowing when to stop pushing—or when to change how you're asking—is a skill, too.

I have gotten a lot done by refusing to leave a problem alone.

I also suspect I've exhausted a fair number of people along the way.

I'm working on keeping the first quality without treating the second as an unavoidable cost of doing business.